As a Japanese prison camp guard during World War II, Mutsuhiro Watanabe was notorious for his cruelty toward POWs, including former U.S. Olympian Louis Zamperini.
Public DomainMutsuhiro Watanabe, the cruel prison guard known as “The Bird.”
The 2014 film Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympian track star who became a prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. While imprisoned, Zamperini was routinely tortured by a prison guard that he and the others called “The Bird.” The man’s real name was Mutsuhiro Watanabe, and he was far more brutal than the film suggests.
A Japanese corporal during the war, Watanabe was sadistic and cruel, and took great pleasure in beating prisoners. He reportedly became so excited by the beatings that he would even froth at the mouth, and Zamperini learned to watch out for him “like I was looking for a lion loose in the jungle.”
So who was Mutsuhiro Watanabe? This is everything we know about the sadistic Japanese prison guard from Unbroken, who was once considered one of the most wanted war criminals in Japan.
Mutsuhiro Watanabe’s Privileged Early Life
Born on Jan. 18, 1918, in Japan, Mutsuhiro Watanabe enjoyed a privileged childhood. As Laura Hillenbrand wrote in Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, her 2010 book about Louis Zamperini that inspired the 2014 film, Watanabe’s family had “amassed riches” through their ownership of Tokyo’s Takamatsu Hotel, as well as other real estate.
Waited on by servants, Watanabe had a luxurious childhood and spent many happy moments swimming in his family’s private pool. As a young adult, he went on to study French literature at Tokyo’s Waseda University. Shortly after he graduated, however, World War II began — and Watanabe eagerly enlisted.
According to Hillenbrand, Watanabe expected that his “education and pedigree” meant that he would immediately become an officer. But instead, he was assigned to be a corporal.
YouTubeMutsuhiro Watanabe eagerly enlisted in World War II, but was outraged that he wasn’t immediately made an officer.
“By all accounts, this was the moment that derailed him,” Hillenbrand wrote, “leaving him disgraced, infuriated, and bitterly jealous of officers…every part of his mind gathered around this blazing humiliation.”
Assigned to prisoner-of-war camps, Mutsuhiro Watanabe soon gained a reputation as a cruel and hated guard — even among his fellow soldiers.
The Cruel Sadism Of ‘The Bird’
While working at several different prisoner-of-war camps in Japan, Mutsuhiro Watanabe quickly gained a negative reputation amid both his fellow guards and the prisoners under his control.
“Even among the Japanese, he was disliked,” Yuichi Hatto, a guard at the Omori Camp, stated in a 1998 CBS Sports documentary about Zamperini. “He was hated…[He had] no patience. He was so violent.”
For the prisoners, of course, Watanabe was even more terrifying. Since he spoke some English, they called him “The Bird,” a word with neither negative nor positive connotations.
One of his main targets was Louis Zamperini, an American track star and Olympian who was transferred to the Omori Camp in September 1944. In an affidavit Zamperini wrote after the war, he described Watanabe as a “frog-faced man” who treated Zamperini and his fellow prisoners with cruelty.
National ArchivesLouis Zamperini examining damage to his plane. The former Olympian was captured during World War II and spent years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
Zamperini described one incident when Watanabe called for 10 of the prisoners, who took five minutes to stop their work and report to his office.
“Watanabe apparently thought this was too long and came running after us,” Zamperini wrote. “He was swinging a big leather belt with a buckle. He hit all 10 of us officers across the face about four times with this steel buckle.”
Hillenbrand describes another incident between Watanabe and Zamperini, when the guard swung a belt made of heavy brass into Zamperini’s left temple and ear. When Zamperini fell to the ground, Watanabe approached him with tenderness, and offered him a piece of toilet paper to press to his ear. But when Zamperini stumbled to his feet, Watanabe hit Zamperini again with the belt in the same place — and Zamperini couldn’t hear out of his left ear for two weeks. At another point, Watanabe forced Zamperini to pick up a beam of wood over six feet long and hold it up above his head, which the former Olympian managed to do for an astounding 37 minutes.
Watanabe was also reportedly a “sexual sadist” who got sexual gratification out of the beatings. Prisoners remember him frothing at the mouth while torturing prisoners, and Hatto later wrote that “Watanabe did enjoy beating POWS. He was satisfying his sexual desire by hurting them.”
Bettmann/Getty ImagesLouis Zamperini, center, upon his return home after World War II.
And Watanabe didn’t only physical beat the prisoners — he tortured them psychologically as well. As Hillenbrand wrote, he’d destroy photographs of the prisoners’ family members and force them to watch as he burned their unopened letters from home. Watanabe also alternated wildly between violence and kindness, and would sometimes give the prisoners candy or discuss literature with them. This kept the POWs constantly on edge.
Then, in 1945, World War II ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zamperini and the other POWs went home to the United States. Mutsuhiro Watanabe vanished for decades.
Mutsuhiro Watanabe After World War II
After the war, stories of Mutsuhiro Watanabe’s cruelty spread. General Douglas MacArthur even listed him as the 23rd most wanted war criminal in Japan, out of a list of 40. But the “Bird” was nowhere to be found.
Indeed, Watanabe had hidden himself to the extent that even his own mother thought he was dead, and built a shrine in his memory. Meanwhile, Watanabe was hiding in the mountains above Nagano. He remained there for seven years, then quietly emerged and established a lucrative career as a life insurance salesman. In 1952, all charges against him were dropped.
He said virtually nothing about his actions during the war until 1998, when Zamperini was chosen to carry the Olympic torch ahead of the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Then, appearing briefly in a CBS Sports interview, Watanabe defended himself.
YouTubeMutsuhiro Watanabe in a 1998 interview.
“Beating and kicking in Caucasian society are considered cruel behavior,” he stated. “However, there were some occasions in the prison camp in which beating and kicking were unavoidable…I wasn’t given military orders. Because of my own person feelings, I treated them strictly as enemies of Japan.”
During his return to Japan, Louis Zamperini wanted to to meet and forgive his former tormenter, but Watanabe refused. He remained unrepentant about his actions during the war until his death in 2003.
After reading about Mutsuhiro Watanabe, the cruel Japanese soldier who tormented POWS during World War II, discover the story of Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese WWII soldier who refused to surrender until 1972. Or, learn the surprising story behind the photograph, ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.’
